Friday, 28 July 2017

Life on the Edge

There’s remote and
there’s more remote: right now we’re merely remote, situated, as we are, in a
camping field on a cliff-top in southwest Wales. At least, it feels remote,
looking out at a sea with no boats and all around nothing but the odd farmhouse
or holiday cottage. The nearest shop is a 20 minute walk away and, although I
know the same can be said of many a suburb, it’s the lack of people and motors
that makes the difference. The sense of remoteness, however, is deceptive: within
an hour we could drive to a sizeable town, with a high street full of Italian-themed
coffee shops occupying former premium retail premises.

“More remote” describes
the place we were at last week: Fionnaphort, on the western-most tip of the Isle
of Mull, is essentially a transit point for the busloads of tourists who turn
up daily for the ten-minute ferry ride west to the Isle of Iona. However, it
does have a shop and, within it, a Post Office, where my partner selected a
postcard and asked for a stamp. Without any hint of humour, the man took the
money for the postcard and asked her to step slightly to the left where the
Post Office counter is located so that the stamp could be sold under a separate
transaction. Amused by this, we then attempted to book a boat trip to the
uninhabited Isle of Staffa. There was no booking office, simply a hoarding
bearing the times, prices and a phone number. However, there is no phone signal
and the public phone is out of order. “Och, jest tern up,” advised the young
girl in the seafood kiosk but when we did, the boat was full. “It’s because the
weather’s nice,” said the captain/bosun/purser/guide, “Do you want to book for
tomorrow?” We did. He scribbled my name on the back of a scrap of paper and
sailed off. One soon comes to accept that informality and idiosyncrasy are part
of the charm of life on the edge.

The weather next day
was even fairer, so we determined to be at the quay early and, while we were waiting,
try the seafood at the kiosk. There was, unfortunately, no dressed crab – my
favourite – but the girl assured us that her dad was out in the boat and would
soon arrive with fresh supplies. So I made do with langoustines and we sat
outside watching the tourists come and go from Iona, while a young piper busked
alongside. I took the time to contemplate the attraction of this place to its visitors,
many of whom are foreigners: North Americans of Scottish extraction, drawn to
their ancestral lands, like salmon returning to their spawning grounds;
land-locked Europeans, savouring the novelty of rugged coastlines at the very
edge of their continent; and British townies like us, getting a fix of nature, at
little cost and in relative safety and comfort. As for the locals, those who
choose to call the place home, I can only speculate why as, to my shame, I have
not transcended the visitor experience to engage with them on a personal level.

There is,
incongruously, a ‘fine-dining’ restaurant, Ninth
Wave in a house outside Fionnaphort, where we and a party of friends had
dinner one evening. It remains a mystery to me how it sustains a customer base,
being in such a remote spot (our friends had to drive 90 minutes, each way),
but the cooking is exquisite, in a finicky-foodie sort of way. More to our
liking, however, was The Crofters’
Kitchen, two miles up the road to nowhere, where a group of what used to be
called hippies has opened a shop and cafe offering home-grown produce, baked
goods and bought-in wholefoods. These two ventures are admirable additions to
run-of-the-mill tourist catering but I do fret about how they will fare in the
winter, when life on the edge must get quite bleak. I would like to be there to
find out and, in the process, make deeper contact with the locals.